Grrl Power #939 – I double dog promise to be good
Jeeze, I hope no one walks out the door to the pool right then. Maybe jump a little to the side there, Anvil.
So I was like, Dabbler is kind of a pain in the butt to draw, what with all the stripes and extra limbs, so why don’t I have her wear her blonde and pink haired glamor from around pages 100-215? And then I thought, why not put her in a scale mail bikini? That’d be easy to draw. Eh. Shading each individual scale was a little tedious. If I ever draw purple stripey armey Dabbler in a scale mail bikini it may wind up being a one-panel comic.
For a moment, I thought that was the last time I’d drawn that variant, but she also used it for a public appearance right before they met with The Twilight Council. Still, it’s been about 500 pages so I thought I’d break it out again.
As to why I decided to make her so tan she’s almost darker than Anvil? I guess she’s experimenting with her luminosity slider. Seriously though, you know how any time you play a game with character customization, it takes you like an hour to mess with all the sliders before you get the chin and the nose width and all the bits and bobs just right? (Only then to don a helmet and never see your character’s face again?) By “you” I mean me, but also probably a lot of you guys as well. Well, if you could illusorily disguise yourself, I think quickly popping into a disguise would be a non starter. Heck, by the time I finalized all the tweaks, the spell would have long since expired.
So, okay, about the “revenge based justice system.” Yeesh, I hope the comments don’t turn into a shitstorm, but, ug. Just try and keep it civil, please? And before you spend an hour typing up your slam-dunk magnum opus inflammatory comment, just remember that no one has ever won an argument on the internet or convinced anyone of anything. It’s just not how human brains work.
I think most people would agree that America is way more into punishing criminals than they are into reforming criminal behavior or even addressing underlying motivators. For instance, states fighting against clean needle programs aimed at curtailing the spread of HIV because giving people clean needles will somehow make them do more drugs? Also, laws making drugs illegal in the first place, when every country that’s ever relaxed laws regarding recreational drug use sees massive drops in rates of addiction and overdose? Whatever your stance is on those particular issues, it’s hard to argue about America’s approach to law enforcement when we have more people in jail than any other country, both by absolute numbers and per capita.
ANYWAY, Detla is just repeating what Cora told her, which is especially rich considering Cora’s lethal ordnance approach to law enforcement. Dabbler obviously agrees though. Both of them are very okay with… eh, proactive self-defense, but they also think that once someone is in custody, throwing them in a wildly overcrowded for-profit prison is less than optimal.
Book news! Star Justice 13 is out! I haven’t even finished it yet, and it’s really good! I mean, it’s hard to beat book 6 or 7, or 10, or 3. But it’s still pretty good.
The new vote incentive is up! I tried something different this month – instead of doing one well painted picture with a bunch of dress variants, I wanted to tell a bit of a story. Hopefully it makes sense without any dialog or sound effects. So, instead of one picture, you guys are getting nine. Well, you are over at Patreon. The vote incentive is just the first one. And yes, Pixel is bendy enough to do a full on T&A pose.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Humans love team sports.
What they haven’t figured out is that they are all on the same team.
This explains economics, religion, the penal system, politics, and war.
Next problem?
You missed the part where some humans inevitably put self-interest first and exploit the team for their own ends. They’re still a part of the team…and on their own at the same time.
We’re individuals and groups. A floorwax and a dessert topping….
also a lot of humans would rather be the best player on the worst team than the worst player on the best team, and will harm their teammates to improve their own standing.
We are most definitely not on the same team.
Human relations are personal for personal fulfillment with personal considerations. And nobody except tyrants that want to dictate others relations want it any other way.
Next problem?
Humans.
’nuff said.
only if you’re one of those left wing extinctionists.
Oh no, now they’re showing off the orbs to an outsider again.
And in “Skill Up” mode, at that. Though if Detla’s mask is the equivalent of a camera, she probably won’t be able to see the skill tree.
Maybe.
Still, possible security breach!
Oh dear!
Given nobody knows what any of the skill tree dots ‘do’ until after they have been selected, and that the orbs are very public at this point there is no harm in them being seen.
The Nth tech part is the state secret.
Finally someone is about to see them who knows where they are from.
They… showed them off to a bunch of reporters, they are old news
But did the reportters get video of the upgrade menu? Did they even understand what they saw?
Halo’s orbs are not a secret. Everything about them is a secret. The menu may or may not be a secret. That said, every time people are shown the menu, the potential for SOMEONE to recognize the orbs as being Nth tech is great.
The problem being that we’re not very good at reform. Heck, long-term incarceration was a mid-19th century attempt at reform by giving the criminally-inclined their own monk cells in which to pray their sins away.
That said, I wonder how many nation-states would have grounds for trying Dabbler under what we call ‘common-law’ felonies. Heck, how often do polities insist on keeping such a monopoly on violence that dueling is illegal and self-defense is criminalized?
Self defense is not criminal, and specifically non-lethal dueling isn’t just legal, it’s a proper entertainment industry.
Seriously, boxing, MMA, fencing, every martial arts tournament ever.
Dueling is absolutely still part of our existence, we just added more rules than “10 paces at dawn”.
That’s not dueling. Dueling was for cause, not entertainment (though of course, nearby people loved the entertainment as well).
Boxing has been around a LONG time, from well back when dueling was still a thing. It does not scratch the same itch, societally speaking.
“I shall have not lesser satisfaction. Their blood will be my quittance.”
AnCap wants to kill people, I guess, because anything less doesn’t count as being “for cause.”
I would think AnCaps would not want to summarily jsut kill people because it’s harder to make a profit off people who are dead. I mean maybe you can sell their bodies but it’s sort of a one-time deal. Living people can keep contributing to the economy for a much longer period of time. ie, it depends on how economically feasible it is to keep a person alive vs having them die, based on the criminal action involved.
Btw I realize how awful and cruel that sounds. I’m being cheeky because AnCap, taken to the extreme, tends to remind me of OCP from Robocop.
Or this movie called Fortress starting Christopher Lambert.
I duel for cause all the time, and I do it non-lethally. Nerf pistols to settle ties in a board game. Foam swords to settle short-term policy disputes at work (only when voting resulted in a tie, that was a good day).
Honestly, a good, old-fashioned foam fight is a great way to settle disputes.
Getting out my foam nerf sword in preparation.
Picard or Kirk?
Gif – hard G or soft G?
Playstation or Xbox?
Sheridan.
It’s pronounced “hyeef.”
PCMR.
…there can be only one.
*draws boffer*
Actually I can’t duel with you on Sheridan because I’d agree with you.
…
Unless you were to say Sheridan when asked ‘Sheridan or Ivanova.’
Then a duel is mandatory, since I would be Team Ivanova. You don’t mess with Susan Ivanova. Even if she’s fictional. She’d figure a way to reach into the real world and do terrible things for doubting her. Because of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRxM1I-M_0
And also because of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VNnVDUxx1U
In short, this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5km8fUWA1I
It is VERY hard to top ‘I am Death’
Don’t even TRY.
Kira Nerys from DS9 had a some good ones, she never managed to beat that and it is highly unlikely that anyone ever will.
Satai Delenn would like a word with you.
Delenn’s best line was:
“Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.”
https://youtu.be/DtNtw2HTFtA?t=49
And that’s cool and all. But standing up to several human warships who are less advanced than you is one thing. Standing up against a First One and making them back down is another. :)
Delenn is smarter than to get into a fight with Ivanova.
Her best case scenario is that nobody wins.
you forgot the most violent of all debates!
Mac or Windows.
id say IOS and android but android has IOS outnumbered.
A true geek would respond to that with ‘Linux’
ZHAIF
I’m whatevs on the others
Pineapple on pizza or No?
People who put pineapple on pizza are a blight on humanity. They need to be put in re-education camps.
The only people worse are people who put peas and mayonnaise on pizza. Sadly, these people can not be re-educated, and just have to be shot into space.
And yes, mayo+peas on pizza is apparently a thing because this world has finally gone too far.
Hmmm. Mayo & peas pizza. Thanks for the idea :)
This abomination against all that is pizza.
https://metro.co.uk/2017/02/28/pea-and-mayonnaise-pizza-is-making-everyone-deeply-uncomfortable-6477828/
Mayonnaise on pizza? More like mayoNAYsie on pizza am I right?
Oh Ro Jaws, you adorable pun-using sweetheart.
*subtly calls for the ninja hit squad, before realizing Ro’s using his pun powers to denounce peas and mayo on pizza…. calls off the ninjas*
Pander. please come with me to a convivence store and contemplate the wonder that is… Hot Chocolate flavored frozen drink. That Blue bell has made a hot chocolate flavored Ice cream is proof that there are aliens running our companies.
I hate to admit it, but a hot chocolate flavored frozen drink actually sounds delicious. :)
I would agree that some of the US correctional systems is a mistake.
For profit prisons are near top of the list. It is always a bad idea to create an industry whose profits depend on people being imprisoned. Especially in a country where people who make lots of profit can hire lobbyists – whose job is to enable them to make greater profit. See what the problem there is?
Civil Asset Forfeiture or fines, when considered as a source of revenue for any organ of the government causes a similar problem. It becomes unclear whether the motive behind some actions are justice, or profit, and sometimes actions may seem to serve the latter more than the former.
Another thing that’s never considered is the cost to society of someone being imprisoned vs. the cost to society of that person being free. Not exclusively in monetary terms, of course; safety and general quality-of-life endangered by crime matter as much as property. But however one counts the cost, imprisonment should be a rational decision.
As Dave points out the consequences of proposed legal changes can often be evaluated by comparison to the laws in other nations, debunking rather a lot of rhetorical bullshit from the process. That rhetorical bullshit has kept a lot of laws in place that imprison people irrationally.
These things are problems. Not gonna thump any drum about what specifically ought to be done to make them better, but these things are problems and we ought to be thinking about finding ways to make them better.
Other countries examples are fantastic, because then the discussion isn’t about theory or models, but working examples. We can point at somebody else and go “They are doing These Things, and getting Those Results.”
US Recidivism (that is, the rate at which people leave jail only to commit another crime) is 64%. Norway is 20%.
We need to steal ideas from them, they doing it 3x better than us.
How about not giving ex-prisoners a publicly accessible criminal record that makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible to make a living the legal way. The way it is now, the US prison system is practically a recruitment system for organized crime.
That is actually an extremely difficult problem to solve.
Because of recidivism, people reasonably do not want to associate with known criminals, and public records on that are public precisely because of horrible examples of people hiring ex-cons who them robbed and murdered them, and such.
And yet, that very reasonable fear does indeed make the punishment for criminals in some cases nigh permanent.
Les Miserables explores that topic just a bit, giving both sides of the problem quite well… but not giving a solution that could be implemented in law. Welcome to humanity.
“Other countries examples are fantastic, because then the discussion isn’t about theory or models, but working examples.”
Yes, but in far too many cases, that way to implement the “solution” of said other country is “have a monoculture” or other such case-specific things.
Also, actual apples-to-apples comparisons between countries is… MUCH harder than it first looks, in a great many cases. Even the terms used do not often agree well.
But it goes far beyond that.
The US “Justice” System is a failure from the very start.
Psychologically Speaking…we are Tough on Criminals, Soft on Crime. This is an Objective Fact.
That being that Positive Punishment (Add Punishment someone doesn’t want)
Is ONLY effective under VERY specific conditions, otherwise the mind doesn’t learn “DON’T do this”, but instead “DON’T get caught” psychologically speaking.
We KNOW that jailing people doesn’t work.
We ALSO know that Fear of Prison doesn’t work on criminals, if it did, then the 3 Strikes Law from California would have worked instead of being an abject failure.
We make weed illegal, despite having FAR more medical use than tobacco, and waaaaaay safer than alcohol for recreation.
We got rid of a lot of the ways prisoners could do things like get a college degree, to get a better life outside.
Prisons are in no way set up to REFORM people.
An that’s without getting into things like Lack of Education = More crime. Poverty = More Crime. Abuse + Lack of Mental Heath Therapy = More Crime.
Not only that, but prisons are FANTASTIC for Redistricting since they can’t vote, but then help them redistrict the voting areas, due to larger population.
An THAT is without mentioning things like innocent people being forced to plead guilty, because too poor to stay in prison to go to court or get bail.
That if you have your own Lawyer, it dramatically increases your chances of going free.
Laws not catching up to the times with things like Identity Theft.
Etc.
One major obstacle to adopting a more reform-centric prison system is the innate sense of fairness many people have. When pictures of some of the nicer prisons in other countries are shown, I see a lot of comments along the lines of “This place is nicer than where I live!”
It may be effective at reforming criminals, but it does so by improving the criminal’s life so much that they don’t need to commit crime anymore. Meanwhile, honest people are struggling to make ends meet, drowning in debt, and constantly nagged by the knowledge that at any moment one tiny problem
It’s a problem where doing what’s most effective feels bad for a lot of people, because it’s not *fair* to those who aren’t breaking the law. In order for any such system to have a chance of getting off the ground, I think there would need to be changes made to make getting help as someone in poverty more accessible so as to avoid doing crime becoming the best way to get back on your feet.
That should be an indication that there’s something very wrong with the world. If people’s lives are worse than being in prison… then maybe that’s not an indication that the prisons are too nice, but that people’s lives are too awful. Maybe that’s why they commit crimes in the first place.
How dare you interrupt Ideology with facts!
The real problem is when there’s a pipeline that benefits one political group. For example:
1) The less education a person has, the more likely they are to vote for group X
=> There is a motivation for group X to impoverish the educational system, and to fight against any attempt to improve it
2) Lack of education is associated with poverty and poverty is associated with crime
=> The impoverishment of the educational system caused by group X in order to farm voters leads to an increase in crime
3) An increase in crime + the existence of for-profit prisons allows the owners of those prisons to make more money, which they donate to group X in order to reward them for causing the increase in crime
=> group X has a motivation to criminalize more behaviors and create more ‘tough on crime’ laws that lengthen sentences for otherwise minor crimes
4) Prisoners are (usually) not voters, so increasing the incarceration rate of undereducated people **across the board** would cost group X voters
=> group X is motivated to tailor the laws so as to concentrate the criminalization into one particular easily-identifiable subpopulation so that the fear of that subpopulation can be used to gain compensatory votes from other subpopulations
Regarding US’s results vs Norway’s results…. The great majority of the disparity isn’t because we don’t “steal ideas” from their penal system, it’s because there are vast cultural and demographic gulfs between the two countries, that “stealing ideas” won’t do a thing to change.
In other words, most of the recidivism is due to the nature of the criminals, not the justice department.
If the US had Norway’s population and culture we’d have something close to their criminal recidivism rate, even if we left the US justice system in place.
For just one metric showing that American criminals are more hardcore than Norwegian criminals, Norway has had 0.3 officers murdered per year in the line of duty (average over the last 30 years). American cops were murdered in the line of duty at a rate of about 60 per year over the same period. Even when adjusting for the different population sizes between the two countries, American cops are murdered at a rate nearly three times higher than Norwegian cops.
The higher violent resistance rate by American criminals also comes into play when looking at the cross-country statistics on use of force by police officers. Different police forces are having to deal with different kinds of criminals.
yeah, not quite so much. It isnt that American criminal elements are more hard-core. You have to take into account population density in cities, the prevalence and ease of access to lethal weapons and the system of incarceration.
Think about it. In one case you know that if you are arrested, you are going to get stripped of civil niceties and tossed in a box where you are going to be the smallest fish in a very nasty pond, you are more likely to want to do ‘suicide by cop’. alternatively, Knowing that if you get arrested you will face a comfortable warm cell, in reasonably allocated spacious prisons and education and help to find work once you get out? id surrender peacefully too.
Population density in cities is a major thing too, while america has a huge population, it is concentrated into a few small areas. Alaska notwithstanding. most other countries spread out their towns and cities, harbouring a denser population overall, but with smaller centers – in population centers people of like-minds tend to find each other, which unfortunately means that criminal elements gather in larger groups and are more able to pressure other elements into doing things their way.
The expectation that people won’t attempt to defend themselves, won’t attempt to avoid a negative outcome with little chance of recovery, is absolutely baffling to me. If you want someone to cooperate with you, you make it in their best interest to do so. If their only options are lose one way or lose another, they’re going to fight. There always needs to be a path to redemption, if they’re willing to take it.
Few people commit crimes just because they’re evil people. They commit crimes because their needs aren’t being met, and they don’t see any other way. If their only options are between being exploited and exploiting others, well, if someone’s going to get exploited, why would they volunteer?
@Torabi: People become CEOs when they are evil people… (j/k, I do know that it’s not a requirement to be evil in order to become a CEO. I just couldn’t resist the smart-assery.)
it may not be a requirement, but it sure helps!
Well said. The first parent of crime is desperation. Ambition is, like, a distant cousin at best.
> Regarding US’s results vs Norway’s results…. The great majority of the disparity isn’t because we don’t “steal ideas” from their penal system, it’s because there are vast cultural and demographic gulfs between the two countries, that “stealing ideas” won’t do a thing to change.
What are the most relevant cultural gulfs between the two countries?
What are the most relevant demographic gulfs between the two countries?
You know what you can do to perhaps fix a culture that produces violent criminals?
Implement a less harsh incarceration system that doesn’t reaffirm and reinforce violent tendencies. Such as what Norway does.
It won’t “fix” the problem in its entirety but you need to start somewhere.
One of the main hindrances to a successful reintegration is the life long cains mark left in all kinds of official places. I am speaking from germany, with an also mostly revenge and “rot forever in low income dungeon” oriented “justice” system, unable to reform though small testing initiatives like letting culprit and victim sort it out to show the culprit that the victim is human too and vice cersa are at least tried some times here.
Life long low income is assured by no chances of getting acceptable income jobs for former inmates as well as the system immanent tendency to let people drop down under the minimal wage limit and keep them there.
Even if the official police records were not available, the gaps in the social insecurity accounts would give any former inmate off and those are relatively easy to come by for employers.
So lets say you do something wrong, land in prison, get out and really want to never do bad things again. You will be punished for the rest of your life anyway with no chance of real resocialisation or picking up from wherever you lost your way. While a life long record might be appropriate or neceassary for really hard crimes, it defies any real chance of reform for the smaller fry.
At least the german prisons are not profit oriented private institutions (i am trying very hard not to mention any labor camp vocabulary here) but the limitations in finance often trigger strange practices like letting inmates take a day off in the real world as the prisons are desperately overfilled (and in one case of a prestigious soccer manager, nearly the whole “prison sentence” was more like forced night in the state hostel kind of “punishment” for massive tax fraud and lying to officers and court alike).
I am unsure if copy/pasting other nations solutions would help at all but the target intention of any judiciary system should definitely differ from pure (life long) revenge or as hard as possible punishment if reforming inmates and resocialising them to be productive individuals is the intent.
Which is ironic, because based on practice, we should be way better at stealing…
Edit: TypoNinja said, “We need to steal ideas from them, they doing it 3x better than us.” Which is ironic, because based on practice, we should be way better at stealing… (Thor! I wish I could edit comments after I click “Post”!)
We’re really, really good at stealing resources.
Especially from poor brown people.
And they are even better at doing it to one another.
Wooooooow…..
“Black on Black Crime: International Edition”
If this were any more cringe, my head would sink into my chest.
On the character customization, that reminds me of Code Vein. I had to have spent two hours messing with the customization, i even got the eyes layered just the way I wanted, chin proportions, lips, face shading, ect…
I almost had a fit when they stuck that “veil” over top of the outfit when I remembered I could turn that off being visible, but the character still has this gas mask on the entire time out fighting. Makes the vampire queen design look a tad off, but at least the eyes are visible.
“Just remember that no one has ever won an argument on the internet or convinced anyone of anything.”
Well, not with that attitude, you won’t.
“I think DaveB is wrong in that statement, and nothing will convince me otherwise!”
And yet we all answer the call of duty.
and this will make the chat even more contentious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
Did we skip a page, because last time we saw Dabbler she and Cora were ringing Ray out to dry?
That was a flashback.
that was a flash back to the night before, the Present was Ray already spent on the couch.
If someone walked out the door and Anvil landed on them, wouldn’t she just land lightly on their shoulder?
It’d be like suddenly giving a 6’9″ bodybuilder a piggyback ride rather than them landing on you.
I had a dream about your comic last night. Details were hazy, but the idea was basically this; Sydney’s orbs are loosely connected to the planets. The Pro was Mars, obviously; red, cracks on the surface, is a weapon for the god of war. Then I thought that the flight-orb was Earth, because it’s blue. But then there’s the one that makes air, so I dunno.
Neptune has way more blue than Earth (it is bigger and does not have those pesky green continents taking up space). So Earth could be either the air orb or the muddy earth coloured one.
Running with the orbs corresponding to starship components (as postulated by Halo herself, and pretty much confirmed once she started zipping between stars), if the Earth orb is not the air producing orb, then the remaining mystery orb could be the command orb. So the equivalent of the bridge, in compartment terms.
Translating that into orb powers could be fun mind. Would it allow control of other people, given that the orb itself does not have a crew? Or would it enhance command and control functions? Allowing Halo to see where all opponents and other pertinent individuals are, communicate with them and predict the results of any battle plans she may propose.
For example the latter function might put Sydney into a state where she could see hours or days worth of battle played out, in her mind, but only taking moments in reality. Nth Generation predictive capabilities giving what would appear to others to be ESP-like visions of the future.
The same (or a similar function, in an upgrade path) might allow virtual target practice and predictions of results of any particular trick shot in a current combat situation. Allowing Halo to game multiple options and practice the best one, in the blink of an eye, before trying it out, for real, once she is confident of getting a perfect shot first time.
I bet you ate a round of Wenslydale cheese before bed, last night?
That would make a good vote incentive I think.
Fuck yeah. Halo in space, with orb-sized versions of the planets around her
this is also confirmed by the name, Halo, with Sydney herself in the center of the orbs, like the sun
Warning LEDs on the pool: ‘Superhero landing in 3… 2… 1…’
yes recidivism is lower in civilized mono cultures. That actually explains nordic countries, until you examine the rate of immigrants and religious converts, turns out they DON’T belong to the culture that values obeying scoiety’s laws.
/thanks for posting that , I laigh when people cliam just adopt some other countries solution, when they never even lived there.
EXAMPLE Japan has a great justice system 95%+ conviction rate because they only arrest those they got solid evidence on. The downside , when cop ask what in the bag, asks for your phone, or to log onto an social media account, you got to do it.
Japan’s conviction rate is artificially inflated by the concept of hostage justice, which is still alive and well in that country. Initial detention periods can be nearly a month long, there is no right to remain silent, and no requirement that you be allowed to consult with legal counsel, or anyone except the police. Confessions count as convictions, and not surprisingly, there are a massive amount of false confessions produced when you imprison and functionally torture and brainwash people. In theory, the standard for acceptance of a confession is that the criminal must reveal a fact that can be verified by the police, which they did not already know, but this standard is almost never upheld in Japanese courts. Police regularly lie about the sequence of what they discovered about a crime and when, to put facts that they’ve asked the detained about as having been discovered AFTER those questions were asked; often these verifiable facts are so vague that they are completely irrelevant to the crime; and the general view of the populace and the police is that anyone arrested is automatically guilty, and needs only to be convinced to confess so that all things can be put in the appropriate place means that these things are regarded as desired features of the system, rather than corruptions of it.
It has much less to do with only arresting people they have solid evidence on than they claim.
Given the trend of militarization has begun taking root in Japan as well, this is terrifying.
Actually, according to at least one source, It is not so bad. Having “confessed”, the Japanese suspect has made the first step towards contrition and reform, and he is treated much better thereafter. Of course the cynic/realist might argue that the cops have what they want, and simply ignore the prisoner thereafter.
Much more violence, is White to Black.
On Black, I meant to say!!
You sound, like a racist!!
I convinced someone to change their position on the Internet ONCE in 20 years.
It is a precious memory, that I hold dear in my heart, from now and all time.
(no, I won’t say what it was because I am not up to swimming in an ocean of shit this week.)
I got many dozens of successes.
*waves paw in the general direction of the archives*
It helps that I have been willing to change my mind, at various times too. Which helps reduce reluctance in others, when they know that. Although there are always issues which are entrenched. But even then it is possible to find some movement, if dealing with someone who has not taken the issue to be an article of faith.
It happens more often than many thinks it does.
I could have probably done better, but long ago I sadly gave up on debating on the Internet.
It is a shame, I genuinely enjoy a good debate. I even take up the opposite position just for a rousing debate. How better to refine your thoughts than to debate the point from both sides?
A knife can not be sharpened if you only grind and polish one side afterall.
Thanks to XKCD translation, on my screen your reply reads like this:
“It is a shame, I genuinely enjoy a good dance-off. I even take up the opposite position just for a rousing dance-off. How better to refine your thoughts than to dance-off the point from both sides?”
*fox-trots off stage left*
Ooh, talking about which, yesterday I saw three incredibly cute, fluffy fox cubs playing at the end of the garden here. Today, checking out the location, I found out that we have a fox den!
Congratulations, foxes are awesome to have around.
I changed someone’s mind on the internet once, it was weird. Beyond shocked I didn’t know how to feel, as, on the one hand I was happy somebody actually listened to reason and reconsidered their position in light of a new perspective, on the other hand I like to argue and was excited for a good one that never happened.
Ah, you should’ve ordered the full course of arguments, not just the first one.
Oh I’m sorry, but this is Abuse. You want Argument, that’s just along the corridor.
*WHACK!!!*
Okay guess I’ll weigh in on this since the reason for prison is usually the first thing taught in criminal law, even before any cases.
This isnt an opinion btw. This is just a long-standing philosophy on the basic philosophy of punishment in general, going back a few thousand years now.
Punishment is justified for four basic principles:
1) Retribution (which I guess would be described above as revenge)
2) Incapacitation
3) Deterrence
4) Rehabilitation and/or Restoration
Retribution is simple because it’s probably the earliest and most basic concept of punishment. If you do something wrong, you have to be punished for your victim to feel that justice has been served. It goes back to the code of hammurabi. Eye for an eye, etc. We don’t have something THAT harsh, but every prison which wants to actually have any sense of justice is going to have to have retribution as at least one aspect of the purpose of punishment. It’s also part of the basic Mosaic laws of the Old Testament, in making sure the punishment does not exceed the crime, but also does not fall woefully short of that crime.
Incapacitation is also a pretty basic concept. The idea is a very utilitarian concept, and probably the next oldest concept for punishment in human history. The reasoning behind incapacitation is to focus on the elimination of the criminal individual’s opportunity to commit further criminal action and/or deviants from societal rules through differnt types of physical restraints on their actions, often based on confinement. Anything from grounding a child to putting someone in prison for life are all examples of incapacitation. So is the concept of banishment from a society, even though it’s not ‘confinement.’ Other examples can include injunctions, case-and-desist orders, restraint-of-trade agreements, restraining orders, revocation of licensses required to do certain functions, foreclosures, etc. Incarceration just tends to be the most widely known version of incapacitation, because it works on the widest area of criminal actions.
Deterrence is probably less useful as a philosophy behind punishment than the first two reasons, but it’s still often pretty effective in having a coherent civilization with rules. The deterrent effect is just the basic idea that the majority of people are more likely to fear breaking a rule if they see actual examples of the punishment in others who have broken that rule. The problem tends to be in the TYPE of deterrence, since there are several types of deterrences – specific, general, marginal, and partial. Deterrence is almost always a secondary rationale for punishment, since it’s not as universally effective, either in the long or short term, as the first two reasons for punishment are. And it can backfire if it’s too harshly applied, by making the population rally around the wrongdoing as a way of fighting back against what is perceived as an oppressive set of laws. It depends on the type of deterrence effect that’s the law is going for.
Last, and usually the least useful philosophy behind punishment is rehabilitation. It’s still a good secondary reason, but more often than not, it doesn’t actually have as significant an effect on the criminal as the other philosophies of punishment have. Most importantly because it treats everyone as carbon copies, where they will all react the same positive way to certain things being done during their punishment. It also tends to ignore the victim of the crime and doesn’t make them feel whole – it focuses more on the person who committed the crime, so it’s only really effective for a societal concept of punishment if the victim goes along with it willingly.
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Also I sort of find it odd that Cora, of all people, would talk down about Terran philosophies of punishment being ‘revenge’ based instead of reform-based, given how Cora’s ‘punishment’ of Splatter McWallSpackle was pretty much ALL revenge and incapacitation to the extreme, with a little deterrence, but absolutely no reform.
You don’t reform from being a raspberry slushie spread across the floor, wall, ceiling, and bystanders. :)
Not sure why you’re surprised about Cora. Those who do the most projection always have the most skeletons.
I’m not surprised – I just find it a bit hypocritical of Cora, given her own penchant for ultra-violence far beyond that of most terrans. To then turn around and talk down about Terran punishment not being as evolved (ie, revenge instead of just saying retribution, as if that’s more lowbrow than reform – especially considering it was Maxima who was the one being wronged by the attempted kidnapping, whether justified or not on a larger galactic rationale).
Of course it could just be Detla’s spin on it and Cora might actually not have ANY problem with a retribution-based system at all.
You shouldn’t find it odd that Cora describes Terran philosophies of justice as ‘Revenge based.’
After all, that’s pretty much the same as her own conduct, at least in spirit. It probably came out when Detla asked why Cora was friends with and approved of ArcSwat.
I mean I find it odd based on how it’s implied by Detla as a ‘primitive’ or ‘backwards’ thing, given how violent aliens have already been shown to be compared to ARC-SWAT. I’m just assuming there was something lost in translation, like Cora was saying it as it’s a good thing and Detla decided it wasn’t since apparently ‘reformation’ seems to be a big part of her culture when beaten by a superior adversary, in order to make yourself a better fighter by training under your vanquisher, should you survive being beaten.
She, is correct!
Reform can be the primary goal of a system of justice without denying that some criminals may be beyond reform.
Primary form? I don’t think it can be. Not without it being horribly unfair to the victim, or expecting the victim to be saintly and without the need for personal closure.
Sure, this criminal killed your father, or raped your daughter (or you), or stole all your money, or beat you up so they were hospitalized for no good reason. But we’re going to focus on making them a better person, rather than genuinely punishing them. We do not care that you have suffered – not as much as we care about them. We care about the person who caused the suffering FIRST and foremost. We care about the person who did the wrong more than the person who did nothing wrong.
That’s what would be the thought process that goes on if rehabilitation was the primary goal of punishment. I know some people think it’s empathetic to care for the prisoner. But it’s more empathetic to care FIRST for the victim, because in that situation, one person did something wrong, and the other person did not. You should naturally want to first help the person who was innocent of wrongdoing, not the person who was guilty of it.
Rehabilitation as a secondary purpose? That’s cool. Because like you’ve said, it does help society in the long run. Sometimes. But not as the primary focus.
It’s like… lets say you have a child. He’s bullying other children, beating them up, stealing their lunch money, etc. You think it’s because he’s bored. So when you find out, instead of punishing him so he knows that what he did was wrong, you find ways to entertain him, in hopes that he won’t keep doing it in the future. How does that help the victim. How does it help ingrain in him that he did a bad thing that should not be repeated? How does it makes his victims feel vindicated and not living in fear that he’ll just do it again if your theory on why he was bullying turns out to be wrong?
How does punishing the criminal help the victim? You say that as if it’s obvious, but it’s not, at least to me. There’s a lot of assumptions about human psychology at work here, and I wouldn’t say that the historical record supports it as a guiding principle in criminal justice. It pretty obviously isn’t working, and I think it’s silly to assume that we’re just not doing it hard enough, rather than to consider that maybe it’s the wrong approach in the first place.
You say that rehabilitation focuses on the criminal, and ignores the victim, but how is punishment different? My perception is that our culture hardly cares about the victim at all, in its pursuit of punishing the criminal. We punish victimless crimes just as harshly, if not more, than those with victims. It’s just moralizing and controlling, not restitution.
“How does punishing the criminal help the victim? You say that as if it’s obvious, but it’s not, at least to me.”
Have you literally never been the subject of a crime from another person in your entire life? I’m just wondering. Are you seriously telling me that if you were robbed at gunpoint, you would not think it helps you to know that the person has been put in jail for his or her crime? If someone breaks into your home, and they are just forced to repay your damages financially, you would be perfectly fine with them not being in jail for their actions?
I honestly do not believe you if you would say that you’d be okay with that, or I’d think you’re operating from a sense of intense naivete that maybe I do not operate from, since when working in a DA’s office I’ve seen more than my fair share of people who have suffered at the hands of a criminal element, in ways that a simple financial recompense does not fix.
“You say that rehabilitation focuses on the criminal, and ignores the victim, but how is punishment different?”
Because punishment gives the victim piece of mind and closure, as I’ve mentioned a few times. It also grants that victim a modicum of safety (ie, they can not cause the victim further damage if they are in prison).
Seriously were you NEVER punished for doing anything bad in your childhood? I’m genuinely curious because your reaction does not seem ‘human’ or realistic, unless it was part of some very sheltered life or of a person who has not only never been wronged, but never done anything themselves that was wrong.
“My perception is that our culture hardly cares about the victim at all, in its pursuit of punishing the criminal.”
Your perspective is based on missing a fundamental difference between the victim and the criminal.
The criminal is guilty of the action he or she committed.
The victim is not guilty of the action that the criminal committed. If the victim was partially responsible, this is covered by a concept called mitigation, which tends to get covered during sentencing, or even as an affirmative defense by the ‘criminal’ (who is at that point not actually a criminal after all, so I wouldnt be using the term criminal then).
“We punish victimless crimes just as harshly, if not more, than those with victims.”
In general, no, we do not. When there is a case of that happening, where a victimless crime is punished more harshly than one with a victim however, I’d completely agree with you that the criminal sentence is unfair.
That does not mean that rehabilitation should be primary, while punishment secondary though.
Also, which crimes do you consider victimless, which has sentences that are harsher than crimes with a victim? Because sometimes, what you consider victimless are probably NOT victimless. And sentences that are harsher than a victimless crime might be because the victim-based crime was UNDER-sentenced, not because the victimless crime was over-sentenced.
I can only speak to personal experience here. But I have been raped, robbed, assaulted, mugged. And more. And retribution did nothing for closure. At the end of the day the scars were still there. Windows still broken. Money still gone. No ammount of brutality can fix those hurts and closure doesnt always come at punishment. Which shows when a victims family responds to the perpetrator getting out at the end of their sentence like they were about to unleash a rabid dog. Thats not closure, thats ten years of avoiding thinking about it. Because ten years in a cell cannot equate to a life ended or permenantly damaged. And there are plenty of people who get more outraged than the victim themselves.
The system is focussed on punishment and revenge because the state certainly wont pay for the victim to get therapy, or replace the windows. Heck depending on where you are. without medical aid or insurance good luck getting those injuries seen to. Thats how much they care about the victim. So much that private support groups are often the only help they can find or afford.
And while no amount of money may be able to undo or make up for the harm the victim experienced for some crimes, it would still be a better use of resources than the amount we’re apparently eager to waste on various forms of punishment.
That our culture is willing to spend more on harming others than on helping them should give pause. That our primary goal isn’t to find the most efficient way to meet everybody’s needs, but instead to hurt and control others, says a lot. People don’t seem to care about what they have, as much as they care about denying others. And that just leads to an endless cycle of people hurting each other, for past, imagined, or potential future actions.
I remember that causing a nuclear explosion and forgery/piracy of music/film/software both has a maximum punishment of five years in prison in germany.
Also, the german law states a copy protection to be “technically effective” even if it is not, a presence of any unspecified “copy protection” is sufficient. Thats one example of many “punish boosters” here.
Next in my “favourite” german laws is imprisonment for individuals who refuse to pay for state backed and pay enforced (no tax or real state claim, some weird construction of forcing you to have a contract with the media corporation, and if you dont want or have one, they single sidedly “sign you up” anyway) TV/Radio/Media although enforcing those protection racket alike media corporations (ARD,ZDF,etc…) may grow and waste money as they like, unhindered and uncontrolled.
There are indeed no victimless or perhaps better damageless crimes but talking about a projected damage of thousands of euros for someone who tried and failed to download any kind of media is definitely not something where the fine/punishment has any impact near the real damage done. Nor have those exxaggerated damage claims ever hindered the usual illegal piracy portals at any known time (and i can remember back to C64 times).
German law still suffers from its antique heritage from the code napoleon, doing physical damage to a human being is punished way less than doing proprietary or financial damage. Victims still struggle to get any compensation for injuries to this day.
So whatever theoretical effect of any judiciary system is intended, as long as severe disbalances between crime induced real damage and punishment intensity remain, the justice system lacks severely in each and every relevant way. Not to mention “crimes” like having not enough of your backside covered up by your bathing trousers, but thats another bucket of worms.
That’s addressed in the description:
>ANYWAY, Detla is just repeating what Cora told her, which is especially rich considering Cora’s lethal ordnance approach to law enforcement. Dabbler obviously agrees though. Both of them are very okay with… eh, proactive self-defense, but they also think that once someone is in custody, throwing them in a wildly overcrowded for-profit prison is less than optimal.
Yeah I realized that after I had written my post. :)
Most of the revenge based incarceration is in cities/states with 3+ win streak for democrat leadership. Note that all of the places where people are protesting institutional racism are long term democrat ruled areas.
People who eschew revenge-based incarceration often are doing so because they’re not thinking of the victim at all, but are instead focused on the perpetrator of the criminal act. :)
Not sure what that says for politics, but it’s true that the focus of retribution is based on helping the victim get justice, while the focus of reform is based on helping the criminal actor get redemption. It tends to not play well with people in general to ignore the plight of the one who was wronged and more innocent of the two involved, in favor of the one who did the wrong and is the less innocent of the two involved.
Reform can also be intended for the benefit of the whole society. A reformed criminal could be a productive member of society, contributing to it, rather than being a drain on it. Incarceration isn’t free, so incarcerating criminals indefinitely just changes the extent of their drain on society, rather than reversing it.
True it can be. But if you do so at the expense of the other philosophies, it actually becomes far more harmful. Not to mention it makes the society itself look a bit sociopathic and uncaring about the VICTIMS.
I’ve found that it’s a lot harder to put reform of the criminal over the need for closure and revenge for the victim or the victim’s family when you need to tell them that their loss and need for closure is secondary to giving the person who ruined their lives/tried to ruin their lives/put them through pain/etc a chance to reform without their ever actually having to learn an actual lesson based on discomfort of the criminal who caused that pain.
It does tend to make people who talk about rehabilitation WITHOUT taking into account retribution, incapacitation, or at the very least deterrence seem uncaring and thoughtless, glossing over why those people are being punished in the first place. It makes attempts at rehabilitating the criminal hollow and meaningless if they are not suitably punished in the first place. It makes a mockery of their victims.
So yes, rehabilitation is important, and useful for a society to engage in. But it’s the least important of the four philosophies of punishment, which is why it tends to be most effective on the crimes where no one was seriously victimized (ie, stealing a loaf of bread from a store to feed your family, selling low-tier narcotics, etc), and least effective on those who did seriously victimize others (killing a person because you have anger issues, or because you thought it would be a fine idea to drive while drunk/on drugs/etc). To focus on rehabilitation, you have to first also focus on at least one of the other philosophies behind punishment if you want it to be effective for a society with any sense of justice or morality.
Rehabilitation by itself ignores the victim entirely, unless you FIRST concentrate on at least one of the other philosophies of punishment FIRST. Why? Because it’s not supposed to be about the criminal first. It’s supposed to be about those the criminals wronged. Retribution is not supposed to be for the criminal to forgive himself or herself – retribution is supposed to be for the victims of that criminal. Or at the very least for others to not have to go through the same pain.
And now I shall quote that most notable of sources – Stargate SG-1: The Ark of Truth. Specifically, what Teal’c says to Tomin (someone who genuinely does feel remorse about the evils he did when serving the Ori, but did those things anyway) about all the wrongs he did, all the people he killed, and how he will never be able to atone for what he did. And he was sitting there, pitying himself that he could not forgive himself, when Teal’c laid the truth down on him, badass Jaffa style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTzuxhOh80M
Teal’c: “Nothing I have done since turning against the Goa’uld will make up for the atrocities I once committed in their name. Somewhere deep inside you, you knew it was wrong. A voice you did not recognize screamed for you to stop. You saw no way out. It was the way things were; they could not be changed. You tried to convince yourself the people you were hurting deserved it. You became numb to their pain and suffering. You learned to shut out the voice speaking against it.”
Tomin: “There’s always a choice.”
Teal’c: “Indeed there is.”
Tomin: “I chose to ignore it.”
Teal’c: “Yet you sit here now.”
Tomin: “I sit here… and I cannot imagine the day when I will forgive myself.”
Teal’c: “Because it will never come. One day others may try to convince you they have forgiven you. That is more about them than you. For them, imparting forgiveness is a blessing.”
Tomin: “How do you go on?”
Teal’c: “It is simple. You will NEVER forgive yourself. ACCEPT. IT. You hurt others…. many others. That cannot be undone. You will NEVER find personal retribution. But your life does not have to end; that which is right, just, and true can still prevail. If you do not fight for what you believe in, all may be lost for everyone else. But do not fight for yourself. Fight for others, others that may be saved through your effort. That is the least you can do.”
THAT’S how you do rehabilitation. You make sure that it still incorporates at least one of the other punishments first, in order to make the rehabilitation mean something to the victims, not just to the criminal. :)
I don’t see how retribution could possibly be more about the victim than about the criminal. That you accept a need for revenge without question is confusing to me. Revenge doesn’t help the victim, restitution does. An impulse to respond to harm with more harm is something we should absolutely be trying to discourage, because it wastes resources and creates a cycle of violence in which people who are hurting lash out at others, who then lash out at someone else.
Rehabilitation isn’t necessarily for the benefit of the criminal. It’s to make them useful to society, which could include the victim. If the criminal damaged or stole something, they should work to replace it. If they hurt someone, they should pay for their medical bills. If they killed someone, they should do what they can to make up for it, whether that be lost income, funeral costs, etc. Those are things which would help their victims. An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind.
Murder, by the state; is still Murder!!
Not really, no.
Murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another.
1) The state is not a human being.
2) Execution by the state is not unlawful.
Therefore, execution by the state, ie, a death penalty after they’ve had a fair trial and all the requisite appeals, from the basis of innocent until proven guilty (rather than a preponderance of evidence) is not murder, by its definition.
I mean, if you’re going to go by whether it’s moral to have a death penalty (ie, how Torabi put it – an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind), that’s a whole other ball of wax. One that isn’t going to be easily decided by a single sentence and requires context.
“I don’t see how retribution could possibly be more about the victim than about the criminal.”
Because it gives the victim a sense of closure. If a person has ever been truly wronged by another criminally, ie, victimized, the basic human desire of that victim is to see that person be punished FIRST, before people start thinking ‘now how can we help this person who has wronged and/or hurt the victim?
Closure is meant to be for the victim, not the victimizer.
“Revenge doesn’t help the victim, restitution does.”
Restitution does as well, but it still leaves the victim in a state of worry about the victimizer doing the same thing again, in hopes that next time they won’t be caught.
Think about it.
A guy mugs another guy. The robber get caught. They do NOT get incarcerated, but instead are just told to give the money back. They do. Then they’re let free.
Does that sound remotely like justice? The victim got his/her money back. Restitution has occurred financially. But it has not put the victim at ease, has it? It hasnt even remotely helped – it just means the criminal has to be more careful on not getting caught the next time.
“An impulse to respond to harm with more harm is something we should absolutely be trying to discourage’
Not so. Harm itself can be good or bad – it depends on the reason for the harm. Defensively causing harm is not the same as offensively causing harm. Reacting to someone trying to harm you or another by harming them does not make the two acts equal. There’s a reason that there are defenses like ‘Self Defense’ and ‘Defense of Others’ as affirmative defnses in a criminal trial.
“because it wastes resources”
Depends on if you think the piece of mind of the populace or the deterrence effect is considered a waste of resources. Also depends on the crime. You can’t make a blanket statement like that to cover everything.
The Eighth Amendment says ‘no cruel or unusual punishment.’ It does not say no punishment. It just tries to make sure the punishment is not excessive compared to the crime.
“creates a cycle of violence in which people who are hurting lash out at others”
Let me give another example.
A man rapes a woman. He is sent to jail for life. How is that creating a cycle of violence? I’d argue it limits the continued violence, at least to the public at large. Would rehabilitation without retribution be better there?
“Rehabilitation isn’t necessarily for the benefit of the criminal.”
Of course it is for the benefit of the criminal. Any benefit to society for rehabilitating the criminal may be possible, but it’s secondary to who it’s actually helping – the criminal who is going to get new skills and beneficial knowledge, at the society’s expense. Any benefit to the society is theoretical until he or she actually benefits the society as a result. And without there first being actual punishment, the lesson learned is ‘I can commit more crimes and I’ll just be given more skills rather than punishment.’
“If they hurt someone, they should pay for their medical bills.”
Uhhhh yes. They should. But that should not be the entirety of the punishment. If the entire punishment for aggravated assault is just ‘pay the other person’s medical bills,’ then you’ve still put the victim in a worse spot than he or she was before the assault.
“f they killed someone, they should do what they can to make up for it, whether that be lost income, funeral costs, etc. Those are things which would help their victims.”
Unless we’ve figured out how to bring the dead back to life, I don’t see how funeral costs and lost income alone helps the victim in a CRIMINAL trial. What you’re describing is the civil side, not the criminal side.
When a person murders another person, there is a criminal trial and usually, afterwards, there’s a civil trial (ie, wrongful death is a tort, murder is a crime).
“An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind.”
Nah, in the end there would be at least one person left who still has one eye.
But seriously, no. That’s a morale against one-on-one revenge, not society acting as one to agree to a set of laws and punishments towards one who breaks those laws.
And like always, it depends on the crime and the punishment.
>True it can be. But if you do so at the expense of the other philosophies, it actually becomes far more harmful. Not to mention it makes the society itself look a bit sociopathic and uncaring about the VICTIMS.
Got any evidence of this, Pander?
Because the reality seems to be that nations focused on reform have a lower crime rate and a lower rate of recidivism than countries that are more focused on punishment:
https://backgroundchecks.org/us-prison-population-vs-the-world.html#:~:text=The%20rate%20of%20recidivism%20in,just%2020%25%20within%205%20years.
“Got any evidence of this, Pander?”
I actually have quite a bit of evidence of this. Just try to put yourself in the place of a victim of a crime. Picture yourself as someone who’s been raped, or who’s relative/spouse has been murdered, then think of if you’d want the person who did the crime to 1) be trained in how to have a marketable skill or 2) pay for what he did to you.
“Because the reality seems to be that nations focused on reform have a lower crime rate and a lower rate of recidivism than countries that are more focused on punishment:”
Actually no, you’re wrong there. Because of MANY reasons
First being you’re connecting correlation with causation, and assuming that because they focus on rehabilitation, that’s the reason for low recidivism, rather than differences in population size, culture, and general crime statistics in the first place.
Second, you still don’t deal with the idea that it is wrong to not focus on the victim being made as close to whole again after a crime has been committed. I’m cool with rehabilitation. But not as the primary focus. It reeks of moral self-virtue, while at the same time being horribly unfair. Not to mention it doesnt work in a society where there are more violent crimes.
Every time anyone tries to compare Norway to the US, I wonder why they’re even trying to make such a comparison of a largely monocultural nation with 5 million people and very un-densely packed (with an extremely low crime rate to begin with – especially with violent crimes) vs a largely multicultural nation of 330 million and many densely packed cities (with a sizable violent crime rate – see the chart).
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Norway/United-States/Crime
It’s like comparing Mike Tyson’s to Mervin who works in accounting. It’s apples to oranges.
You have a prison setup meant for millions a year vs a prison setup meant for just under 4000 a year, most of which are non-violent crimes for a very short period of time (1.8 million vs 1,106, of which about 1065 are because of drug and alcohol offenses for the latter number)
And it still does not give any justice to the victim.
Here’s my personal anecdote: My brother was murdered. My youngest brother. It’s bad enough to lose an older relative, or a parent — you generally expect them to die before you, of old age, if nothing else. But for a parent to lose a child, for someone to lose a younger sibling? That’s indescribably awful. Time stopped for me. It took me years before it felt like that day ended. I relived that loss every day, and it felt like they all just blended together into one long period of suffering. And we never got any closure. The murderer was never identified.
And what did I want? Well, sure, I didn’t want them to hurt anyone else ever again, and if killing them was the best way to accomplish that, then I’d be for it. But I’d prefer them to live, and accept the weight of what they took from the world, and try to make up for it, by doing good for others in my brother’s stead. That would seem like appropriate restitution to me.
My philosophy is that every action should either increase the amount of good in the universe, or decrease the amount of bad. Harming someone else doesn’t make me happier. I could take some satisfaction from eliminating someone who causes more harm than good, but it wouldn’t make me happier.
Before I write this I want to genuinely say I’m sorry for what happened to your brother, and I’m going to assume it actually did happen because that seems like a terrible thing to just write for an internet argument. Please don’t take anything I write after this as an attack on you, because it’s not meant to be an attack on you. In fact, I’m going to steelman your argument by assuming everything you said it absolutely true.
“And what did I want? Well, sure, I didn’t want them to hurt anyone else ever again, and if killing them was the best way to accomplish that, then I’d be for it. But I’d prefer them to live, and accept the weight of what they took from the world, and try to make up for it, by doing good for others in my brother’s stead. That would seem like appropriate restitution to me.”
I find it hard to believe that, if your brother was murdered, you would want rehabilitation for your brother’s murderer BEFORE wanting punishment to the murderer who took your brother away. It’s just difficult for my mind to conceive that sort of thought process. Maybe that means you’re a lot more forgiving than I could ever be.
If that really was your mental state and how you decided things, and I’m to just take you at your word (I will, because I’m going to steelman this argument), then there are two ways I can respond to this:
1) You’re rather saintly in your disposition
2) Your need to be virtuous outweighed your love of your brother.
I don’t think you’re a complete monster who did not care about his brother’s life and any suffering he went through before dying, the suffering of those around him (including yourself) at his being taken from your lives, etc, so I don’t think it was #2. So I’m going to assume you’re rather saintly in your disposition instead. Since I’m steelmanning this argument.
However…. now to try to extrapolate that VERY UNCOMMON reaction and say all people should have your reaction? That sounds awful and unjustifiable. Again to quote Teal’c in The Ark of Truth:
“One day others may try to convince you they have forgiven you. That is more about them than you. For them, imparting forgiveness is a blessing.”
You have no right to tell other people that they must have your level of uncommon forgiveness, and arguably non-human levels of compassion for those who have cruelly taken from you.
Even assuming everything you said was true. And assuming you truly would rather see your brother’s murderer rehabilitated, rather than punished, it is unnatural, immoral, unrealistic, and frankly, cruel, for you to impose that belief as a requirement on others, most of whom would NOT be able to think the same way as you.
“I could take some satisfaction from eliminating someone who causes more harm than good, but it wouldn’t make me happier.”
It’s not about being happier though. Again, it’s about closure. And for most people, the state’s punishment of the person who has wronged you gives at least some measure of closure.
Again, to paraphrase Teal’c:
“It is the least [the state] can do.”
I would describe myself as cruel and heartless before saintly, though if you see my perspective as saintly, then what does that make your perspective from mine? Fundamentally, I am as incapable of understanding your position as you are mine. I am a creature of principle. I don’t know if I can succinctly express the full significance of that, but you verged on describing it in the same moment you failed to understand it: my virtuousness defines and underlies my every thought and action, including my love for my brother. I am indeed, a complete monster, from the perspective of a human being.
How common my perspective is has no bearing on its correctness. You give humanity a pass on the basis that you’re human, and invested in the idea that humanity is fundamentally good. I suffer no such bias. If the human race cannot learn or evolve to become moral beings, then they should cease to exist.
How does retributive punishment teach a criminal anything other than that their own impulses are correct, that it is appropriate to hurt people who do things you dislike? Unless it is similar to what they inflicted on their victim, how are they to learn that what they did was immoral, rather than just that the state didn’t approve of it?
Part of what I think you’re missing is that rehabilitation may very well be punishment. You seem to think of rehabilitation as “giving the criminal marketable skills, which they can then use to extract value from other people in a capitalist system”. That you think participating in capitalism benefits the individual more than the society should itself serve as an indictment of capitalism. And maybe I need to be more explicit about what I’m recommending: that the criminal be forced to carry the burden of their victim, be made to comprehend the harm they’ve done, and forced to contribute to society, uncompensated. Community service, essentially.
I told you I was cruel.
>Picture yourself as someone who’s been raped, or who’s relative/spouse has been murdered, then think of if you’d want the person who did the crime to 1) be trained in how to have a marketable skill or 2) pay for what he did to you.
First off: You’re thought example isn’t evidence. Do you have any proof that victims in Norway, or other countries, view their criminal justice system as sociopathic or dismissive of the victims of crimes.
Secondly; I don’t have to choose, Norway does both.
If a rapist is caught, they are tried, convicted, and then jailed for a certain number of years. The victim is referred to mental health services to help deal with their trauma, and that’s about where the victim’s interaction ends with the punitive process. (Just like in the states.)
But Norway, unlike America, tries to keep prisoners in more humane conditions, give them more robust therapy, and try to teach them marketable skills during their sentence. Which leads to lower crime rates and lower recidivism.
And as far as I know, the victims of crimes in Norway don’t have much of a problem with this.
>First being you’re connecting correlation with causation, and assuming that because they focus on rehabilitation, that’s the reason for low recidivism, rather than differences in population size, culture, and general crime statistics in the first place.
Even when you control for the population difference, our crime RATE is still way higher.
You’re own source proves that: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Norway/United-States/Crime
So either Americans are somehow innately more violent and prone to criminality than people that live in Norway, or it’s due to how our criminal justice affects our culture. Which is something that can be changed.
>Second, you still don’t deal with the idea that it is wrong to not focus on the victim being made as close to whole again after a crime has been committed. I’m cool with rehabilitation. But not as the primary focus. It reeks of moral self-virtue, while at the same time being horribly unfair.
Not to mention it doesnt work in a society where there are more violent crimes.
1)You can do both. Like Norway does.
2)Oh no, there are more violent crimes in a nation that almost exclusively focuses on punishment, has a “hard on crime” mentality that has hurt local communities, and gives ex-cons very few legal options when they get out of prison?
I wonder why that is…
>And it still does not give any justice to the victim.
And the USA gives more justice… how exactly?
“2)Oh no, there are more violent crimes in a nation that almost exclusively focuses on punishment, has a “hard on crime” mentality that has hurt local communities, and gives ex-cons very few legal options when they get out of prison?
I wonder why that is…”
I would guess that is because once you were convicted, your “legal” and “society compatible” life is over forever, you are an outcast and the only parallel society that will accept you is the much referenced “criminal world”.
An outcast will use every chance and means not only to survive but to get revenge on whoever cast him out. And why not ? There is no chance of ever getting back into “the society” which quite likely turns into “them” and thus “the enemy”.
And so we have any and all pretense of “justice” and “morale” as revenge oriented life long servitude punishment systems produce a never ending supply of revenge driven or simply desperate outcasts and thus produces more victims in the long run.
I wonder if the new victims would be ok in the knowledge that at least the prior victims got satisfied with the punishment.
I am unsure if there is a real solution, much less as any “one size fits all” system is destined to fail when dealing with individual cases. What i am sure of, though, is that religious writings have no solution at all, as their main target is power and control instead of really helping human beings get along well with no matter who else.
“People who eschew revenge-based incarceration often are doing so because they’re not thinking of the victim at all”
Because the two are separate.
The systems in place to deal with a criminal are different from the systems intended to help the victim of a crime.
“Because the two are separate.”
I’m not sure how you can separate a criminal act from the victim of that criminal act. It seems to support my idea that you would not be thinking of the victim at all.
“The systems in place to deal with a criminal are different from the systems intended to help the victim of a crime.”
Ummmmm no.
The system is in place SPECIFICALLY to help the victim of a crime in three of the four philosophies of punishment. If you’re talking about tort-based action, it’s a secondary matter after the criminal action. I find a lot of people don’t seem to understand this – that there is civil/tort-based action and criminal action, and both are centered around making the victim as whole as possible – one for justice, the other usually for finances. Saying that a wrongful death charge helps the victim more than the murder charge does, again, ignores the victim and makes me think that you’ve never been a direct victim of a crime. It show a distinct LACK of empathy, when your argument is, I’m going to guess, trying to show that you’re very empathetic, since you’re empathizing with the perpetrator.
Either that, or you’re Gandhi. And you shouldnt expect everyone to be Gandhi because that’s the height of hubris.
Btw sorry if the tail end of that post sounded in any way too aggressive. I usually try to avoid using the word ‘you’ in my posts, mainly because I don’t know you and I’m trying to argue instead about a broader audience… and it just slipped out.
Just assume that when I said ‘you’ I means ‘people who tend to argue this sort of thing’ because I wasnt trying to personalize my argument.
>I’m not sure how you can separate a criminal act from the victim of that criminal act.
I mean physically, literally, the victim becomes irrelevant to the punitive system after the criminal is tried and convicted.
>and both are centered around making the victim as whole as possible – one for justice
Keeping the perpetrator away from the victim makes them feel safe and mental health services + restitution help them actually recover.
This vague idea of giving them “justice” doesn’t actually do anything for either party.
>Saying that a wrongful death charge helps the victim more than the murder charge does
Not what I said.
I am not Ghandi as i do not beat my wife and children but i get what you mean.
The issue has been discussed on a mostly person oriented outcome, victim oriented or whatever.
Judiciary systems should not be person oriented but fact oriented and this is where the already difficult issue of translating real world situations in legalese multiply immensely.
As unempathic as it may sound: whats “best” for a victim does not need to be “best” for a society or larger group. A perversion iof this basic logic principle (quoting Spock:”Logic clearly dictates, that the need of the many is not with the need of the few”) is seen every time people in power or with a considerable amount of wealth are handled much more delicately by “justice” than people who lack that kind of influence.
If i may, i would like to remind of one of the victims killed by a member of the saudi “royal” family (predating the murder of Kashoggi) where the criminal investigation was stopped before it began and the victims relatives were “convinced” to accept blood money and drop the charges. So they got “compensation” and “justice” was done, the killer was “punished” and the victim remunerated. All well and good ?
Collateral victims of drone strikes (well what would you expect, an AoE weapon like the predators hellfire rockets is somehow not too precise) have a fixed amount of blood money – if anyone survives and the claim is accepted – of around 2000 US$ if i remember correctly. Same principle here, the victims get “compensated” by a rate that has been predefined and the institution nonresponsible hast to pay. All well and good ?
Back to germany. Muggery as an example. The criminal will have some time in prison, the victim will only be financially compensated if enough money was found in possession of the criminal and with the non chance of the criminal getting a halfway decent job ever again, the victim looses out. Furthermore, a recompense claim for damages and injuries is civil law while the prison sentence is criminal law. You cant take something out of a naked mans pocket, if i may crudely translate.
Victim oriented justice systems would have to make sure any victim was justly compensated for any loss and that the perpetrator was punished according to the damage done. I have not found any judiciary system that at least pretends to work this way.
“we need revenge based justice because the victims want to get revenge” isn’t exactly an argument that it’s *not* irrational and revenge-based
And in Repub ruled areas, people are too beaten down to protest.
especially now that the protestors can be run over with impunity.
I hate having to respond to something so political but this is technically a legal issue so i’m going to.
That’s not what the law says at all. Regardless of what you might read in an opinion piece. It doesnt say a person can ‘run over protestors with impunity.’ It’s about the protestors needing to mitigate the risk, and if they do not, the burden should not be on the drivers, it should be on the ‘protestors’ that caused the danger in the first place. it doesn’t mean drivers can go aiming at pedestrians just because they’re ‘protesting.’ Btw, I put the word in quotes because in many of the cases where someone was hit, the ‘protestors’ were in the process of trying to drag the driver out of the car. A few other cases were of getting run over happening being at night, with no warning to drivers to even know that there would be protestors in the middle of a full highway.
The law does not eliminate vehicular homicide just because the person hit by the car was protesting, nor is it viewpoint-dependent.
It just means that someone in a car does not need to let themselves be dragged out of the car and beaten by the ‘protestors’ and are allowed to try to escape instead.
Also if you’re driving at night and suddenly there’s a hoard of protestors ON THE HIGHWAY, there’s a bit of a question about why they should be on the highway in the first place, putting themselves in danger (not to mention putting the driver, who has done nothing wrong to be in this situation in the first place, in danger as well). In the law there’s something called mitigation. You are obligated to take reasonable steps to mitigate the danger that you’ve put yourself in. Protesting, at night, in non-reflective clothing, without any sort of permit to block the roads so that the government can let drivers have warning to go around the area, is not mitigation of the risk. It’s creating the risk. In fact, it’s an unreasonable creation of the risk where most drivers had no idea what they were getting into at all. No mens rea. No way for the driver to have eliminated the risk. Etc.
You make it sound so reasonable. We’ll see how the laws are actually used in court.
Well that IS what courts are for. :)
But I just know what the law they’re trying to pass entails, and the reason for the proposed law – and it’s not so people can run other people over willy nilly. It’s to allow people to retain the right to retreat from a dangerous situation, and to acknowledge the need for mitigation by the protestor when that protestor is doing something inherently reckless, dangerous, or aggressive.
As written, it’s a reasonable law.
> As written, it’s a reasonable law.
Really? We’re talking about Florida’s HB1, right? https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/1
I read through it and found multiple things that seem pretty unreasonable to me, if only because I think that laws which are trivially abusable are not reasonable.
*) Lines 750-758 state that the definition of ‘riot’ is (tl;dr) 3 people doing anything that the prosecutors/police don’t like:
===== quote
(2) A person commits a riot if he or she willfully
participates in a violent public disturbance involving an
assembly of three or more persons, acting with a common intent
to assist each other in violent and disorderly conduct,
resulting in:
(a) Injury to another person;
(b) Damage to property; or
(c) Imminent danger of injury to another person or damage
to property.
===== /quote
2.c seems to say that if there are 3 of you chanting ‘defund the police’ and waving signs then the cops can claim that they felt threatened by your actions and, boom, you’re guilty of rioting.
Lines 764-774 state that in order to be an ‘aggravated’ riot all you need is (among other options) a riot that includes 25 or more people. That means that any BLM protest is going to be an aggravated riot if the police go in with tear gas (excuse me, ‘chemical irritants’) and the protestors take any physical action that the police decide is threatening.
Many of the clauses relevant to riots involve the victim not being eligible for bail, which seems inappropriate to me. If we trusted someone enough to put them on the bench then we should trust them to use good judgement when setting bail based on the circumstances. (IMO a lot of judges should not be trusted to be on the bench, but that’s a separate issue.)
As to the “it’s okay to run protestors over” section that the news has been trumpeting, I’m guessing that’s lines 816-825:
===== quote
870.07 Affirmative defense in civil action; party convicted of riot.—
(1) In a civil action for damages for personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage, it is an affirmative defense that such action arose from an injury or damage sustained by a participant acting in furtherance of a riot. The affirmative defense authorized by this section shall be established by evidence that the participant has been convicted of a riot or an aggravated riot prohibited under s. 870.01, or by proof of the
commission of such crime by a preponderance of the evidence.
===== /quote
Check me on this: It refers only to civil actions so it wouldn’t have been a defense for James Fields Jr running over Heather Heyer. On the other hand, if a neo-Nazi runs over someone at a BLM protest and white supremacist cops[1] fail to bring charges or intentionally contaminate/suppress evidence such that the perpetrator is found not guilty in the criminal case then when the victim’s family brings civil charges the perpetrator could use the fact that the victim was at a protest to claim that the protest was a riot and therefore they get off. I acknowledge that the defense wouldn’t necessarily work, but am I misunderstanding the issue?
[1] Back in 2006 the FBI called out the fact that white supremacist groups were intentionally infiltrating law enforcement. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-supremacist-infiltration.pdf
so what you are saying is that essentially they are creating self defense by automobile/truck. what is not supposed to be covered despite what both sides seem to be saying is when a protest is going on and someone who is not an LEO gets in their vehicle (that is not marked as a police vehicle) to ‘break up’ the protest.
“so what you are saying is that essentially they are creating self defense by automobile/truck.”
Actually no, I’m saying they are making sure that a driver still retains the right to retreat from a dangerous situation where their own lives are under threat. To say that they do not have a right to drive through a crowd of people who are attacking their car is to say that they should just let themselves be beaten up by the mob, or killed by the mob, or have their car trashed by the mob. None of that is remotely reasonable for a society. Even in the most anti-castle doctrine/anti-stand-your-ground states, there’s a general agreement that you at LEAST have a right to flee from people trying to hurt you or worse.
“what is not supposed to be covered despite what both sides seem to be saying is when a protest is going on and someone who is not an LEO gets in their vehicle (that is not marked as a police vehicle) to ‘break up’ the protest.”
That literally is not covered by the law. That type of intent would be leading to assault or attempted murder. The law covers something entirely different than what you’re describing. The right to flee.
Btw I didnt mention republicans or democrats because laws should not be viewpoint dependent in the first place.
Anyone else see any potential future problems with Sydney dropping in with her alien tech set wide open for anyone to see, and an off-worlder present?
shared the other one here, so might as well this.
a second Grrl Power fanfic (a follow up to the first as I had three events in my head that I didn’t get to before, including a more drawn out battle scene with more balanced fighters).
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Grrl-Power-fanfic-2-877351867
Where is part one?
looks like I dropped the ball on the links
usually at the bottom there are links to other parts of connected stories *deviant art despite all its updates still doesn’t have a good set up for chaptered stories*
part 1: scenes 1-3 (yeah was doing this scenes thing for this one)
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Grrl-Power-fanfic-scenes-1-3-875769092
part 1: scenes 4-5
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Grrl-Power-fanfic-scenes-4-5-875780553
part 1 finale *scenes 6-8*
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Grrl-Power-fanfic-scenes-6-8-finale-876198526
to keep it simpler, here is the fanfiction story site I also posted it too.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13858133/1/Grrl-Power-fanfic
I forgot all put all four segments there as well, traffic there is really slow compared to something like deviant art.
Cool, thanks. Queued up, looking forward to reading it.
Thought for you: If you’re publishing, do it on Archive of Our Own or RoyalRoad instead of FFN. Much better features for authors, the comment section actually allows responses, and FFN has some *major* security issues.
http://archiveofourown.com
http://royalroad.com/
And here that I thought American justice system was all about making money from jails… you learn something new every day
Funny how exploiting some people for profit is considered an appropriate response to some people exploiting other people. Kinda reminiscent of the whole “Kill one person and you’re a murderer, kill a thousand and you’re a hero.”
What’s interesting is in Federal court, which is probably where she’d be facing charges here because of the whole “is an alien-alien” thing, bail is automatically given unless there is no reasonable combination of terms to ensure showing up for trial. So convincing testimony towards oath-keeping could suffice, there.
Buuuut Detla really needs to talk to, and take the advice of, a lawyer. Making statements like this to law enforcement is a terrible idea. Pointedly, here on this page her frank admission that she was aware she was risking incarceration but chose to continue anyway is what’s called “consciousness of guilt”. It makes you more culpable in the eyes of the court, and does not help you during sentencing.
As a non-human, and possibly in the eyes of the law a non-person, can Detla even be charged?
And as an actor from a foreign entity with which the US has no diplomatic relations, was the actions not a crime but an act of war?
She can be charged by the Council, and by any treaties that the Council might have with the US government, possibly.
Otherwise… no, she really couldn’t be charged if there were not treaties with the Council and possibly some form of extradition.
(which is why her cohorts have been sent to space prison, and are not in a human prison).
as a note, as she is not an acting member of her government that we are aware of then it is not an act of war.
Although it is not unprecedented for a government/nation to treat any foreigner attacking any of their citizens, especially military and government officials as an act of war; technically speaking it shouldn’t be treated as such as this is an over reaction that in many cases could be cleared up by diplomatic talks and the understanding the individual acted on their own and was not sanctioned by their government.
Yep, it’s not an act of war if the attack is not by a government, but just an individual working independently of a government.
ie, If you are in another country, and you commit a crime like murder or kidnapping in that foreign country, an act of war has not been issued between that country and your country. It’s just a criminal act.
I’m starting to think that everyone is spending too much time around Sydney to be good for their Mental Health
If you can keep Sydney moving too fast for her orbs to catch up with her, you have rendered her powerless.
Can’t her orbs go at least Mach 16, though? And Sydney can’t be yanked too far from them any more than they be yeeted away from her.
Not so much that the Orbs can move at M16 on their own, but that the ‘Sydney + Orbs’ system as a whole can move at M16. Consider it like moving your hands while in a vehicle: if the fastest you can move your hands while stationary is 10 m/s, then flying a plane at 500 m/s still doesn’t let you move your hand at more than than 10 m/s relative to yourself*. The upgrades on Alar improved the maximum speed of Sydney (the plane), but not of the Orbs relative to her (the pilot’s hand).
* Thin-air numbers for sake of illustration, don’t pay them too much weight.
just remember that no one has ever won an argument on the internet or convinced anyone of anything.
I actually did it once.
That’s a lifetime total of ONCE, in about 25 years of Internetting. It was kind of astounding! Follow-up comments from other people were like, “Whoa… Did that just happen? O.O”
I’ve considered commissioning myself an ironic trophy. Can’t decide what the little statue on top should be though.
I’d go for a question mark wielding a baseball bat.
Yeah, our justice system is pretty much borked. A good idea on paper, until you realize that it only works after the crime has already happened, and that it puts a monetary value on human suffering, and that a lot of people are going to want to cash in on that.
Id probably argue with Delta and Cora views on the hole earth justice system. Only because that its not so much focused on revenge, but personal profit and benefits.
Cops get more benefits for how many cases they close, which is why things like coerced confessions from innocent people that in fact didn’t do the crime and evidence tampering or planting are a thing.
Likewise prosecutors also benefit more for people they successfully convict. not weather there innocent or not.
As for prisons…. Well there called “For profit prisons,” for a reason! The more people they are contracted to hold the more money they get. So repeat offenders are practically a guaranteed win for them. And the way prison society is inherently designed, were small time and petty offenders are tossed into the tank with violent offenders, rapists, and murderers, leaves these individuals with no choice but to ether integrate and become worse offenders, or be victimized and brutalized by them. And you all know you’d pick the former in that situation. Small fish ether become sharks themselves or get eaten by them. Pretty much guaranteeing that they will inevitably be sent back to jail.
The government officials themselves also are influenced by lobbyists that are paid by for profit prisons and other corrupt elements ins this system to have them fight agents programs that can help other factors and underlying issues. Not just clean needle programs, but also community centers, outreach programs, and after school programs. And that’s not even covering the pointless drug war that weave been in for years that not only was originally put in place because of overly racist overtones and to crack down on the poor and black, but to also put more and more people in prison.
Its not always about Victums and punishment/revenge. But purely profit.
In NH, someone tried to put one, here! The state, said “hell no!”
Now I’m curious who would win in a polite spar or even full on fight. Achilles or Brit in the Invincible Comics who is black ops or secret agent. works with cecil. and is impervious. plus either has some super strength or at least brought his strength up
To be fair I’ve at least once changed my mind, due to an angry youtube comment.
Yes it’s something I’m pretty impressable with, but that doesn’t mean it is less true.
I used to use the term females to refer to women in the context as phyisical beings(example: “Most females have breasts”), but due to that comment I learned some people took offense in that and it’s not actually a common usage for the word in the english language of which both are good reasons not to do it for me as multilingual. Much later a less angry comment managed to give me a statisfactory reasons for the token offence.
That less angry comment was a welcome addition, because it took the “Newspeak” fibe from it.
so.. which thread were you clicking reply on but instead posted in main comment
I was reacting to Dave’s blog under the comic
I expect Syd to accidentally drag one of the orbs when Anvil lands.
Wish there was an edit function:
Drag=Grab
I’ve got “Detla can read the skill tree, 100 to 1! Can’t win if you don’t play!”
You can’t lose; if you don’t, play!
Next Dabbler will want to examine Sydney’s “skill tree” set up…!
She already did, she was still at the Press Conference when they first appeared, she wasn’t able to record them but she was able to memorize them and draw them on a whiteboard (that’s when we first met Pixelicious and Specs)
How the hell is Super Rookie beating out GrrlPower on Top Web Comics? I mean it’s an okay comic, but it clearly isn’t in the same league as GrrlPower.
vote
i think Dabbler is a firm believer in the chain-mail bikini possessing a high AC; after all, her in that sort of attire, with succubus blood in her veins, the distraction will be out of this world; they might as well just lay down their weapons cuz they won’t hit for SHIT
We need 500!
I can’t believe Max questioned the idea that the United States justice system is predicated more on revenge than reform. Are we supposed to think of her as someone who’s never really thought about it, or someone who’s so blindly unsympathetic to criminals and “bad guys” that it’s never occurred to her that anything other than punishment might be called for?
We’re supposed to think of her as someone educated by the US public school system. And the US military. It’s a cultural problem.